The Stackpile » Marrianne

A moment of silence, please.

Marrianne — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:11:31 +0000

Another advertising legend has passed on. Please take a moment to bow your head and pay tribute. It is only right. Three forefathers of advertising are no longer with us. God bless them. Most recently we lost, Mr. Whipple. Earlier this month we lost Tom Cadden. And, back in August, we said goodbye to Jerry Ringlien.

Not following?

Mr. Whipple influenced our desire for soft paper tissue.

Tom Cadden helped us fall in love with the power and scent of a strong, bald man.

Jerry Ringlien (please scroll to second “Remembrance” listed) taught us the value of loving our food the way we’d want to be loved.

It is incredible to look back at commercials of yore — to see how easily we were entertained and enticed. To discover the history of these ads and learn about the men behind some of the first jingles we probably ever memorized as a child. If you are like me, it probably didn’t dawn on you that these jingles were advertisements. To me, and maybe to you, they were funny little rhymes that you could sing with friends while making sandwiches… “My bologna has a first name!” or with sisters while conducting chores…”Mr. Clean! Mr. Clean!” And, it probably didn’t dawn on you that Mr. Whipple’s silly attempts at getting women to leave his product alone was anything other than laughable entertainment. The simplistic and humorous approach of these ads is universal and elementary. But I fear they haven’t stood the test of time. Rather, we are bombarded with and annoyed by commercials these days. We have stripped the subtleties of brand messaging and the values of entertainment out of our advertisements in favor of creating fast catch phrases to cram into our consumers’ minds. “Can you hear me now?”

The Price of Sox

Marrianne — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:43:29 +0000

Q: What’s the most amount of money you’ve ever spent on Sox?

A: If purchasing during World Series 07, you should prepare to spend between $15k – $55k – that’s based on buying direct for one spot!

Shock Value – What’s it worth?

Marrianne — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 22:54:57 +0000

Nolita, a high-fashion Italian clothes label, launched a new ad campaign this week. The campaign features an anorexic model (an oxymoron, if you ask me). This woman has been anorexic since age 13. Her name is Isabelle Caro and I’d love to tell you more about her disease but her blog site is in French (a language I don’t speak). Isabelle has peaked my interest because her story of anorexia is not one that began because of the modeling world. Rather, the modeling world embraced her despite her disease. And, now she is helping to leverage the controversy over too-thin models. Interesting, right? But to what extent is Nolita going to push the envelope on this issue? And, why did they decide to spend time and money on a campaign that lacks deliberate call to action? According to The Wall Street Journal, Nolita is running spreads in Italian newspapers and posting billboards in cities such as Milan. The copy that appears on these ads is, “No. Anorexia.” Ok, great. I agree, now what? Can I donate? Can I sign a petition? Can I ban a competitor’s clothes line who employs anorexic models? Is there a high fashion label out there that doesn’t employ anorexics (even if it is to raise awareness of the issue)? Seriously, how is Nolita moving the issue? What is this shock value worth? What’s the shock going to inspire people to do? Voice their feedback on Nolita’s website? Then what? What action will Nolita take? Purpose, people, purpose! We need purpose. But most of all – more important than anything – we need to get to the bottom of anorexia as a disease. Whether a by-product of the modeling industry or a by-product of a poisoned childhood, it doesn’t matter. What matters is how do we get the women of the world to love Twinkies the way I do?

Gangsta Love

Marrianne — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:35:53 +0000

If you do not already consider gangster sign language during the creative planning stage of your campaign’s development, you may want to reconsider. Virginia Tourism Corp learned this lesson the hard way after spending $400,000 in creative development for their “Live Passionately” campaign. The print campaign includes an image of a woman making a hand gesture of a heart. This same hand gesture is also used by the Gangster Disciples (and clearly they’ve trademarked it). Therefore, VTC has decided to remove this gesture from the imagery in their campaign so as not to condone the gangsta lifestyle (this is my interpretation; exact rationale has been made public on the VTC’s website).

Question: When did gangster sign language become so powerful that the rest of the world decided to claim defeat on ever using their forefingers and thumbs to create a heart? What other symbolism can a hand-shaped heart gesture have? Can this gesture really be misconstrued to mean anything other than love? And, I don’t know too much about gangs but isn’t one of their core strengths the fact that you can find brotherly love there when the rest of the world has failed you? So, wouldn’t it be logical to think that perhaps we’re all using this gesture in the same manner, to express the same intention – love? I’d like to consider this a multi-cultural breakthrough, no?

The good news for VTC is that their campaign hasn’t officially launched. They discovered this sign language controversy during a soft launch of the campaign so there was time to modify the campaign. Phew!

And, the award for originality goes to…

Marrianne — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:10:21 +0000

Er, it won’t be going to the marketing firm who relaunched a local law firm’s career page recently. The marketing firm completely ripped off a creative concept from an advertising giant who has provided our industry with decades of case studies in successful mass marketing. Despite this, the law firm’s new career page and the marketing firm received front page coverage in last week’s Boston Business Journal. I wonder what the marketing firm’s creative strategy was – copy and paste?